Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie

Klagge, Britta

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0001pmid: N/A

Financial markets, business financing and the recent financial crisis. Financial markets and business financing are a neglected topic in economic geography. The recent financial crisis highlights the importance of these topics for understanding economic development and points to the complex relationship between structures and processes at various geographical scales. This introduction to the financial geography special issue provides background information on the development and the functioning of financial markets. The most prominent change of Germany’s financial system is a growing capital market orientation resulting from internationalisation while the country at the same time is sustaining a distinctly regionalised financial structure - thus highlighting the importance of multilevel analyses in financial geography. The contributions to the special issue are positioned and discussed against this background. The paper concludes with outlining challenges and opportunities for economic and financial geography.

Gärtner, Stefan

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0002pmid: N/A

Can German savings banks avoid regional downward spirals? An insufficient number of banks in weak regions can perpetuate a cumulative downward process and increase regional disparities. In case of Germany the regionally-limited savings banks are of special interest for regional development as they are deeply involved in local and regional economy. This paper deals with savings banks from theoretical and empirical point of view and discusses the question whether savings banks in poor regions are economically as successful as in prosperous regions and, whether they can outrun ‘downward spirals’ in less developed regions.

Handke, Michael

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0003pmid: N/A

Flexible financing in Spanish industrial districts? The example of Alicante. Flexibility is seen as one of the main characteristics of small and medium sized enterprises (SME). However, concerning financial aspects this characteristic is reversed: compared to larger firms SME are financially inflexible. The paper analyses spatial aspects of financial flexibility under a systemic as well as an organizational perspective. In particular, it focuses on the flexibility in financial relationships between banks and SME in a local production system in Alicante/Spain. Theory suggests that financial relationships which are embedded in a local production system support the financial flexibility of firms. However, empirical evidence of Alicante challenges this view. The Spanish financial system in general is dominated by multiple banking relationships. They depend on transaction-based short-term financial contracts and include collateral securities. These are contracts which seriously narrow the financial flexibility of firms. The case of Alicante shows that the rationality behind this kind of transaction-based relationships is more related to routines in banking organization than to risk perception in a local production system. The paper concludes that spatial concentration does not automatically lead to a local dimension of finance.

Wallisch, Matthias

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0004pmid: N/A

Corporate financing through business angels. Spatial organisation patterns of the informal venture capital market in Germany. Business angels play an important role in the financing of high-growth ventures. As informal investors they support entrepreneurs not only with money but also bring added value to their companies. The article examines the investment behaviour of business angels and traces the spatial diffusion of informal venture capital by considering different forms of proximity (spatial, organisational, cognitive, institutional and social). The findings are based on a large set of quantitative and qualitative empirical data collected from angel investors in Germany.Analysis of the data suggests interrelations between investment industries, social networks and the spatial mobility of informal venture capital. Altogether the spatial organisation of the business angel market in Germany can be described as an interregional network with financial and technology clusters as central nodes.

Klagge, Britta; Peter, Carsten

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0005pmid: N/A

Knowledge management in networks of varying geographical scopes: The example of private equity (PE) in Germany. An analysis of the private equity (including venture capital) value chain shows that private equity firms’ strategies integrate and rely on the exchange of knowledge with various external partners in order to reduce investment risk. In our paper we theoretically discuss and empirically examine what type of relationships and positions are aimed for by PE-firms and how this translates into knowledge management and network strategies. Specifically we explore the geographical scope of PE-networks and how PE-firms’ knowledge management connects and integrates regional and supraregional networks.We will show that although regional financial centres function as nodes in these networks, PE-activities do not seem to play an important role in (re)stimulating financial dynamics in these centres.

Schamp, Eike W.

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0006pmid: N/A

The financial centre - a cluster? A multiscalar approach and evidence from a case study of Frankfurt/Main: The cluster approach has recently been applied in various studies of financial centres, for example of London or Frankfurt. Its current use in financial geography, however, seems to be more metaphorical than analytical. This paper firstly discusses specific sectoral characteristics which make it difficult to simply apply a concept which was developed for the industrial sector to the financial economy. Secondly, value networks in the production processes of financial products indicate that only certain parts of the production process, i.e. knowledge-based, non-repetitive transactions in the network, require local proximities. Following Gordon/McCann in their reasoning on industrial clusters, it is argued that the cluster approach to financial centres calls for a multi-scalar perspective combining the juridical national territory, the advantages of a large urban agglomeration, and, finally, the network externalities of a district within the urban agglomeration, i.e. the “financial district”. This is demonstrated using the example of the financial centre of Frankfurt/RhineMain, a term which stands for the larger urban agglomeration.

Sternberg, Rolf

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0007pmid: N/A

First Nobel Prize given to an “economic geographer” - a critical assessment from the perspective of a proper economic geographer. This paper critically assesses both the theoretical approach of the New Economic Geography (NEG) developed by US economist Paul Krugman and the decision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to give him the 2008 “Nobel Prize in Economics” for his work on trading patterns and the spatial concentration of economic activities. This assessment is done from the perspective of a proper economic geographer. The basics of Krugman’s NEG models are presented and discussed in the lights of the state-of-the-art of current theoretical and empirical work on NEG. A considerable effort is undertaken to identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of this attempt to explain spatial concentration of economic activities in the scope of spatial equilibrium models. Despite the fact that most of the proper economic geographers, namely in Germany, have hitherto been quite reluctant in working with NEG models and its propositions the message targeted at economic geographers is clear: they should use the huge potential of the NEG available for empirical and policy-related research more intensively than before. Thus, the decision of the Nobel Prize committee is good news not only for economists interested in spatial concentration, but for proper economic geographers as well.

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0008pmid: N/A

Heeg, Susanne

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0009pmid: N/A

Real estate research in geography. The article focuses on changes in the research on real estate and property issues in geography. It is argued that the deregulation of financial markets has triggered transformations in the way property markets and the real estate industry work. This is reflected in the research about it: the analytical focus has shifted from local property markets and local real estate industry to international property markets and global real estate industry.

Parnreiter, Christof

doi: 10.1515/zfw.2009.0010pmid: N/A

Global-City-formation and the making of a new “corporate geography“: The case of Mexico City. The paper argues that global-city-formation is a key driving force in the transformation of urban landscapes and in the globalization of real estate markets. Taking Mexico City as a case study it is shown that the growing presence of a) foreign companies and b) advanced producer sector firms increases demand for office space, in particular in the high end spectrum of the market. This demand is met by the production of a new CBD in western parts of the city. Mexico City’s corporate geography is, thus, characterized by two CBD, with the new one housing the majority of firms that entered the Mexican market in the last 15 years. The paper also argues that the new corporate geography is marked by processes of de- and transnationalization, becoming thus step by step detached from the urban fabric.